Me Ke Aloha, ku'u homeo O'ahu

There are a couple of areas in my life where my behaviour is completely irrational, and over which I don't seem to have any control. These are 1) losing weight and 2) Hui Hawaii.

There is nothing I can say about 1) that hasn't already been blogged to death by a million others, so I will proceed directly to 2). Hui Hawaii is a Hawaiian club started about a year ago by some local people in the town who have lived here for the last several decades. The oldest of them, people in their 70's, grew up in Hawaii, still have family there, but have lived here in the mainland for many decades. The younger members, most of them younger than I, were born and raised here, have family ties back in Hawaii, -- and ties just as strong here locally, I might add, most of them have Spanish last names.
Last Fall I got a call asking if my daughters could join a Keiki (kids) Hula Halau (troupe) they were forming for a Christmas Program. Evidently they had quite a few boys, but only a few little girls, who had never danced. Of course I was delighted to hear about the whole thing and couldn't wait to meet everyone and get involved.

At the appointed day and time came, I herded all the kids into the van and headed over to the address I had been given. It turned out one of the neighbor kids got caught up in the sweep, but since I was running late, I figured it would be easier to just include her, call her mom from the road and give her an afternoon activity she hadn't expected. She, like my kids, has been taking dance classes since she was 4 or 5 anyway, so it shouldn't have been any kind of problem. They were looking for girls anyway, right?

So, we got there. I met them. Right away there was stand offishness. I could see they were surprised by my whiteness. Out of that particular group, I was the only one who had lived in Hawaii, as opposed to visited, had gone to school there, grown up there. Out of all the little girls there, mine were the only ones who had ever danced before, and who were even familiar with a couple of the songs. I had brought some Hawaiian quilting stuff, to see if there might be any interest in getting something along those lines going. None of the women there had actually ever seen one made, or even many actual quilts. In spite of all that, it was like all they could see about me was my skin. I went to two of the meetings, and the whole time I kept hearing things like "We thought your girls were younger, we really wanted this to be all little kids," "I don't know yet if it's OK to open this up to the rest of the community (re: my little neighbor showing up). We might decide to charge..." "We decided we WOULD include the military people, not just 'Locals' (non-whites)" And on and on. I finally withdrew. I mean I paid the dues, and I check the email updates, but I took my too-old kids out of the Halau, and told them to let me know if they ever got an adult group going. They did, but I didn't find out until the first performance was publicized. I haven't attended any of the functions. I don't feel welcome.

The question is, why is this so hurtful? It is bad enough to live with all these Haoule people around me, but I can't tolerate being excluded by even pseudo-Hawaiians.

I hadn't really consciously thought much about any of this until last week when I was sitting in a doctors office. As a patient, I mean. I decided to address 1) and went to a Bariatric specialist in Sad Diego to see about getting some professional help with losing weight. The MD turned out to be from Waipahu, a little town near where I grew up. They were our big High School football rivals, actually! Anyway, he noticed my bracelet, I guess and started asking me about Hawaii. Like a real Hawaiian. I briefly mentionedthe above situation, and was just overcome with sadness and weariness about the whole thing. As he was charting the treatment plan he said kind of under his breath "You need to lose this Haoule husband, go home and marry a Local Boy."

OMG!! I think tears came into my eyes. What is that all about?